Stormy Stormy Night
by Taliesin-niseilaT
Summary: Storms can do strange things to people.
1. Maurice Moulterd

**Stormy Stormy Night**

_Maurice Moulterd_

There was something strange about storms in the country.

Maurice Moulterd knew that. He knew the legends. He knew there were people who had gone insane after being caught outside in a country storm. He knew about the hallucinations. The things people saw and heard. The things people thought they could do.

He just never thought it could happen to him.

* * *

><p>She had touched him. His Rachel. Mrs Slocombe she might be to the unruly bunch she dragged with her to Millstone Manor, she was still Rachel to him. And she had touched him. Accidentally, of course. She reached for the milk at the same time that he did. Her fingers touched his and he felt a bolt of lightning shoot down his spine.<p>

After all these years, he had no idea he could still have feelings this strong.

* * *

><p>He had been outside during storms before. There was no reason why anything should happen now, when nothing had ever happened in all those years.<p>

The thunder had never bothered him before. He didn't care about the lightning. The rain was just a bit of water. So why had the storm given him such a headache?

Maurice Moulterd was not a scared man, but that night, he was terrified.

* * *

><p>Mr Rumbold had scared everyone to death wandering the hallways of Millstone Manor, and he had run to the room Mavis shared with Mr Humphries. He didn't know what Mr Humphries did with his daughter, nor did he particularly care. Mavis had shared this bed with the last chef, too. Plus, he was fairly sure Mr Humphries wasn't interested in girls. What mattered was that he had a safe place to sleep off the headache the storm had given him.<p>

* * *

><p>The next morning, time had slowed down, or so it seemed to him. He fed the pigs and the goat, collected the eggs and milked the cows, and when he checked his watch, barely five minutes had passed. He tapped the glass, thinking the watch had stopped, then brought it up to his ear and to his surprise heard that it was still ticking. And suddenly there was only one thought in his mind.<p>

_The insanity has set in._

* * *

><p>He had run straight to the bottle of syrup in the kitchen of his cottage. A lot of people who lived in the country had this medicine handy for emergencies. It helped against fever, coughs, headaches, sleeplessness and hallucinations. It was for that last purpose that Maurice Moulterd needed it now. He poured a spoonful into his mouth and swallowed the foul-tasting liquid.<p>

It didn't help.


	2. Betty Slocombe

**Stormy Stormy Night**

_Betty Slocombe_

It had been a shock for her to see Maurice again. They had last seen each other nearly fifty years ago, but he still hadn't forgotten about her. She couldn't exactly remember why she had fallen for him back then, but of course she was now two failed marriages and a bucketload of men older and wiser. It made sense she wouldn't see things the same way she saw them when she was fifteen. She shook her head when she thought of all the stupid things they did at the farm in Tiverton.

* * *

><p>They'd had a really big scare once, and they had been more careful after that. Her best friend Margaret had been less lucky. She had met Margaret when she arrived at the farm, and they had immediately struck up a friendship for life. Then she'd found out that she was pregnant and at sixteen, she'd married John – the son of the farm owner, no less - and gone to live somewhere no one would know her. Maurice got hold of their new address for her, and she wrote a letter. Not to Miss Margaret Smith, but to Mrs Margaret Axelby.<p>

* * *

><p>All these years later, John had left and their son was a lawyer in his late forties, but Betty and Margaret never forgot each other. They went out, drank way too much, complained about the men in their life and at the same time observed the bar in case any interesting specimens of the opposite sex wandered in. Margaret was in Spain these days while Betty was at Millstone Manor, but she often thought that if Margaret came to visit it would almost be like way back when, just the two of them and Maurice. Except that all three of them were single now.<p>

* * *

><p>Men she'd had affairs with seemed to have the unfortunate habit to make miraculous reappearances later in life. She went out with Stephen Peacock in the sixties, and ten years later he was her superior at Grace Brothers. Maurice was her first boyfriend in the forties, and fifty years later she lived together with him on a farm once again. Actually she now lived together with <em>both <em>of them. That was not just coming full circle, that was downright insane.

* * *

><p>She did always overestimate the effect she had on men, but today she seemed to be able to do no wrong. Mr Rumbold practically fell at her feet when she asked him to pass the sugar. Captain Peacock gave her a smile that was reminiscent of his thirty-year-old self. The guests at the hotel tipped extremely generously. Even Mr Humphries seemed to be more obliging, though it was hard to tell this behaviour apart from his usual friendly attitude.<p>

* * *

><p>Trouble didn't start until she tapped Maurice's shoulder to ask him whether she could give him a hand collecting the eggs. He whirled around with a speed that was entirely unfitting for his age, and the look in his eyes took her back to barns in nineteen forty-one and firsts, so many firsts, and she could only think <em>wrong wrong wrong <em>when Maurice leaned in to kiss her.


End file.
